


Pariah

by ushauz



Series: You Spin Me Right Round [2]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, Grey Wardens, Roleswap, Tevinter Imperium, Tevinter Politics, Warden Headcanons, spywork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 22:25:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14628291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ushauz/pseuds/ushauz
Summary: He wasn’t a soporati. He was just. Late. That was all. That was what Father kept saying, over and over, while Mother grew quiet.A Roleswap AU in which Bull is born to an alti family, fails to manifest magic, and manages to live regardless.





	Pariah

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to AquaticPopsicle who really wanted this fanfic. It went somewhat in a different direction than how I first thought, but I hope you still like it.

Bull was born to a proud magisterial household with alti on both sides of the family. His given name had been Ferrutius, but his parents only used that name when they were particularly mad at him, usually because he had been found once again somewhere he shouldn’t have been or tried to finagle some loophole in the Rules. Which was kinda funny, since he was pretty sure those kinds of shenanigans were the reason why he ended up with that nickname in the first place.

Stubborn as a bull. Can’t be deterred. Can’t be stopped!

He was told that as an altus, his heritage reached back to those the dragon gods had favored. He personally would rather have been born as an actual dragon, but dragon-related heritage was a vaguely acceptable alternative. His mother would tell him he was destined for great things. Alti bloodlines were carefully monitored for the best of health, of minds, of magic, and that one day his magic would awaken, and then he could either go to a Circle if he wanted or get a private tutor.

No, his mother said, she could not tutor him directly because she was very busy with boring Magisterium business, no matter how much she wanted to. Nor could his father.

His parents were always busy, even if some of it didn’t _look_ like being busy at first.

“You’ll understand when you are older,” Father said, and Bull had huffed because that’s what people were always telling him about many things.

In the meantime, Bull was taught in the basics of what seemed like every subject there was out there, and he was also taught the rudimentaries of how to use magic. This was something all alti children were taught. Or laetens-born children. Or even a good number of the soparati children, tiny hoarded snippets of knowledge, just in case.

Magic responded to will and wishes and thoughts and ideas, and so Bull practiced keeping a steady mind.

Demons seemed scary at first, but his mother laughed and said not to worry. Bull already knew how to deal with suspicious strangers, right? Ones who offered gifts or ones who were threatening. Keeping safe from demons was essentially the same principle, both in their world where it was obvious, and also in the Fade where it was less than obvious. But luckily mages could easily learn how to tell the two apart, and aside from magical exercises, here were some ones for telling the Fade apart from the mortal world.

So he practiced and practiced and practiced, and he waited for his magic to come to him.

—

He was five, and that was around the early days of when magic could develop. Sometimes it could be as late as _ten._ There were sometimes even later bloomers, but such were usually revealed to have been doing more subtle magic all the while, and his mother and father would keep a close watch.

In the meantime, he practiced his exercises. He did. Really! He just couldn’t tell if he got any of the dreaming ones right because he still struggled to remember what happened when he slept.

—

He was eight now, and magic still had yet to come. Bull was worried and upset. What if it never happened? What if magic didn’t come to him at all? His mother was also growing worried which didn’t help with his own worry, and it was creating some kind of worry feedback loop.

“He’ll be fine,” his father said confidently to his mother in the study. With the door closed. And locked. Bull knew that meant he shouldn’t be listening in which was why he absolutely was doing so, in a hidden crawlspace between walls. It was dusty and filled with spiders, and he had to half-plaster himself between the walls which meant he couldn’t be using this particular method for much longer, but eavesdropping was eavesdropping, and any number of spiders was acceptable in this path. “My sister took a while as well. We are from some of the purest lines, Atilia. I have all of the faith in our son. He is healthy and clever and incredibly stubborn. He is going to do great things.”

He didn’t want to disappoint them. They both had such high hopes, and Bull knew that if he took much longer, the people at court would start to whisper about him. There goes the Petreius kid, still not yet in a Circle, how peculiar. Tsk tsk. He knew this because he had seen it happen before once.

After a while, the kid just stopped showing up, and he didn’t know if the family had hidden her out of shame, or…

—

It was evening, and Bull was sitting on a bench in the gardens of some magister or other. He should probably start keeping track of their names, but he’d memorize some of them, and then they’d die, and then there would be other magisters to fill in their spot, and it just seemed like a hassle.

Okay maybe they didn’t die all the time, but it sure felt that way sometimes.

…his parents were magisters. He kicked his legs back and forth. Hopefully they wouldn’t die. Not soon at least. Everyone died, even if some of the magisters and high class mages researched into otherwise.

To be fair, some of them were really, really old. There was one lady that was at least two hundred, which was honestly impressive not just because of figuring out something around the aging but also not dying to assassins or something else. He didn’t know exactly how she did it, but it was probably blood magic of some sort. Almost all things relating to the body were, or rather the body was the providence of blood magic.

What she was doing likely wasn’t the Approved sort though.

He held out his hand, palm upward, and ignored the chattering of various bugs and birds that didn’t care if there was a person party going on or not, they were _busy_ animals and had sounds to make, _thank you._

Once again, he tried to summon flame. He tried to imagine it, spin it into existence by his stubbornness alone. And once again he got nothing. He frowned. His namesake was failing him.

See, if he was a dragon, he wouldn’t need to summon fire. He could just breathe it at everyone and fly around and do dragon-y things.

He heard rustling in the distance, and quickly dropped his hand, glancing over. (Assassins wouldn’t be so noisy. Also, poor move to attack at a party where there were people watching everywhere, even in ‘secluded’ gardens.)

Another kid half-stumbled into the clearing, cursing as she disentangled her sleeves from an offending bush. She sniffed, rubbing her face with her hand, and Bull realized she’d been crying.

“You okay?” he asked tentatively.

She jumped, apparently having not noticed him, and her sad frown became a scowl. “What do you want?” she half spat, hurt turning into viciousness.

He raised his hands. “I didn’t mean anything by it. You just seemed sad was all.”

She outright sneered then, scrunching reddened wet eyes. “I don’t need some _soporati’s_ pity.” She stomped off then, this time managing to miss any kind of shrubbery.

He watched her leave and then stared down at his hands. But he wasn’t a soporati. He was just. Late. That was all. That was what Father kept saying, over and over, while Mother grew quiet.

He glanced back towards the main center of things which seemed to be still in the center of things and then hunched in on himself.

He wanted to go home.

—

It was a month after his twelfth birthday. He woke, stretching his limbs, before blinking at the amount of sunlight in his room. It was late, far too late for breakfast and then also halfway into a tutoring lesson, right?

Everything was silent.

A strange sense of unease crawled into his gut, and he carefully crawled out of bed, keeping his movements muffled as he dressed. He thought for a moment, and then he slid a sheathed dagger under his clothes. He had been given one when he was eight, when his father had given him a long talk about assassins, and how they had guards and wards and silent magical alarms around his room, but precaution was a necessity as an altus. And then his father had hugged him tightly.

Rival houses didn’t care if he was a child, after all.

He hadn’t had to use it yet, even if he had been instructed on how, just as he had been instructed in magic and math and history. He knew there had been at least two attempts from eavesdropping in that crawlspace because there were things going on that he didn’t know about, and nobody could blame him for being curious.

He listened at the door before carefully opening it. There were a few of the servants at the end of the hallway who looked over at him. They said nothing and moved out of sight, causing his insides to twist.

He walked down that hall, and then another, wanting to say something, ask what was going on, but found it difficult to break the silence muffling his air around him and sneaking into his throat.

He peeked into one of the rooms where he heard murmurs, and the staff there quieted when they noticed his presence.

For a moment they stood there, giving him a strange expression, before one of them—the head cook—gave him an emotionless look and then broke the silence for him. “Your mother will likely want to see you. She is currently in the main library.”

He nodded before hesitating, almost asking what was going on. Mother would know though.

At the door to the library, Bull hesitated. He was curious and inquisitive and still he hesitated. He knocked first, out of politeness—and also to maybe not startle anyone because he certainly was feeling jumpy right now—and then he entered the room.

His mother was sitting on one of the reclining sofas, head in her hands.

Her bloody hands. And there was blood spattered across her robes.

“…Mother?”

She looked up at him, and her eyes were red and puffy. “Hey,” she said, voice soft and catching. “Come here.”

He didn’t. “What happened? What’s going on?” He tried to keep a waver out of his voice, but he wasn’t successful.

“I um,” and she halted, voice catching again, and Mother was never lost for words. “I wanted to let you sleep in.”

He stared at her. “You’ve given up,” he said. He looked at the blood and then at her. “There aren’t any tutors because the magic isn’t coming, is it?”

“It’s okay, Bull,” she said, and her voice became fierce. “There’s no shame here, and there are still other options we have. You are smart. There’s all sorts of paths in mathematics and sciences and art. We can tutor you in anything you like.”

 _She_ was telling him there was no shame in this, here sitting _alone_ with blood on her robes.

“…Father didn’t agree, did he?” he asked, voice a whisper.

She looked at him with tired eyes and blood on her robes. “No,” she said, voice cracking. “He didn’t.”

He felt numb and somewhat detached from everything. A few days later it would all catch up to him, and he would cry in his room, clutching his knees, and silently sobbing for hours.

He walked over then, and she hugged him tightly, almost to the point where it hurt.

“It will be okay,” she whispered. “I will make things work out for you.”

—

Some of the staff was missing, including a few of the guards. A number of the remaining servants and all of the slaves would avert their gaze if they noticed him.

It wasn’t _quite_ over, as it turned out.

Bull spent the next few months in a well-guarded wing with only the most trusted household staff allowed to visit him. Almost all of his previous tutors were gone, including Visellia who hadn’t even been trying to instruct him in magic, and only Caelus was left, who was obnoxious but apparently deemed safe.

The problem was that Father had family who weren’t happy about him dying.

(Because he couldn’t manifest magic, and now he was too ashamed to even try.)

He didn’t need to ask Mother if he had been struck from the Petreius family line. The head now was likely one of his uncles.

Mother had family who didn’t approve either. Upon his death, Bull had been absorbed into the Magna family line. So not only did she give birth to a soporati child, said child was now a member of their own House, and that was not acceptable.

Bull knew assassins were a thing. There had been some assassins before, and he thought he handled the idea in a very mature manner, but now?

Now the main estate was not a safe place to be, and Mother didn’t want to risk moving to one of the more private estates as they had not been thoroughly combed by her yet, and better the place she knows.

He was scared for himself, and he was scared for the household staff who sometimes would get in the crossfire, and he was really, really scared for Mother and would quietly pray to the Maker for her to live in the small hours of the night. He supposedly didn’t intervene anymore in the mortal world because of Tevinter’s sin of killing his prophetess, but anything was worth a shot at this point.

He also considered praying to the three remaining Old Gods, just in case, but if he prayed to them, that might cancel out the prayer to the Maker.

—

His mother visited him more lately, despite the assassins, and despite having to cling to her position in the great social hierarchy. Bull knew he had messed that up as well. He had messed everything up by merely existing, and people had died for it, and more people might die yet. She had always been busy before, and now she seemed half-ragged trying to keep up with everything.

Still, she visited him more.

“It shouldn’t be too much longer,” she said, and he half-believed her since she hadn’t said such things before, and she tried to be as honest with him as possible.

That also likely meant that most of the people who disagreed with the decision were dead.

It wasn’t as if he had been particularly close to any of his cousins, but he still found himself dreading finding out which ones had lived and which ones had died.

Which ones had thought he should die.

“So what have you been studying recently?” she asked, and Bull politely pretended the outside world didn’t exist.

—

When it all finally cooled, Bull found out that a number of her previous allies in the Magisterium had turned their back on their House, and that their House had fallen a not-insignificant bit in the grand scheme of things. Mother had been changing, he knew, but she was fiercer in social functions now. She walked with power and stared all potential rivals down.

The one silver lining to this was that she had not died, and she had slaughtered her rivals, and that had proven her House worthy in at least that regard.

She had also managed to scrape a few new precious allies in all of this.

—

Bull wasn’t surprised that Magister Alexius was now an ally of their House. He should have been happy about this, right? But Magister Alexius hadn’t turned on his son and wife. Magisters Alexius and Arida were still happily married and actually in love with each other.

Not that extended family didn’t end up dead. But still.

Then again, Felix did have some strangled scrapes of magic, but only enough to make him barely above Bull and nowhere near enough for him to be anything less than contempt in the higher classes.

Suddenly for some strange reason, he and his mother would visit the Alexius’ estate. Sometimes Alexius’ family would come visit him, complete with a Felix. It was painfully obvious that this was all arranged because his mother decided that apparently he needed a friend, and that Felix was going to be that friend. So, of course, Bull was determined to hate Felix who still had some magic and still had a father, and the deaths had stopped with only a grandfather, and his insides seethed.

The problem was that not only was Felix likable, but he was also equally determined to befriend him.

—

“That’s it?” Bull asked.

Felix had managed, with a great deal of concentration, to produce a small shower of colorful sparks. “Yup. All tapped out for the day.” He laughed sheepishly and then rubbed at his hand.

It was still more than Bull could do.

“What about demons?” he asked.

It was completely illogical, but Bull was disappointed. He had listened to all the stories. He had memorized all of the advice. He spent years dedicated to practicing how to notice, fend off, and/or fight a demon when need be, and then _this_ is what he got.

“I thiiiiink there may have been a demon once?” Felix said. “It was in an area where the Veil was pretty weak, but I still had some problems making out what it might have been saying. Best as we could figure, it got discouraged and shuffled off.”

“All that demon-fighting training wasted,” Bull said sadly, and Felix nodded sadly as well.

“There’s still a chance,” Felix said. “If the demon was on this side of the Veil, one could still try to make a deal.”

“You think?” Bull asked hopefully.

—

It wasn’t just about him (even if it felt that way). Magisters Alexius and Arida were working closely with Mother now. It wasn’t that they hadn’t met before in the Magisterium and had dealings, but simply that their goals were much more intertwined, especially with Father dead who had been more of a traditionalist.

Magisters Alexius and Arida also loved Felix more than words could state, and they were happy to see him make a friend.

—

Felix loved math. Felix really loved math. He loved math to what Bull considered an unreasonable amount, and this was coming from himself whose favorite childhood book explained the science behind how many things worked.

Felix’s parents had also taken the path of letting him study whatever he wished, and Felix was happy to study many different kinds of subjects. And many different kinds of math.

(To make something of himself, take away the sting of being a nothing in the eyes of high society. Let them pretend.)

—

Sometimes, Bull still attended high social functions. Occasionally it was unavoidable, and occasionally Bull didn’t like feeling like he was hiding.

Mother would mingle and snipe and entertain, and the other magisters would flash her viper smiles right back.

It was nice seeing things had returned to like how they had been for the most part, Bull thought, nibbling on some cheese. Except for the part where he wasn’t interacting. And it wasn’t just on his part; the others would look at him and then look over him, ignoring him as if he was an uninteresting piece of furniture. Any remarks made about himself were to Mother, not to Bull.

It stung. It really fucking stung, but he was tired of feeling like he was hiding, and so he just stayed near the buffet area and watched the world sweep around him.

For now.

—

He wasn’t sure why he tried it.

(To see if he could have any slightest redeeming value as an heir, one last chance.)

He’d studied it, of course. Hardly anyone hadn’t in Tevinter. What the South considered to be blood magic and what Tevinter did were two very different things. ‘Let mine be the last sacrifice’ Andraste had said, so why would there be anything wrong of drawing upon yourself to push beyond what you normally could do?

How was it any different than an adrenaline rush or, in some scenarios, taking blows in order to defend someone?

Blood dripped from the small cut he had carefully made, and magic still eluded him.

—

Later it would be at exactly one of these functions where Bull began to feel stirrings. People sniped and gossiped and exchanged fake pleasantries, and one magister poisoned another as magisters were wont to do.

It wasn’t as if they didn’t notice his presence per se; they ignored him, not that he was invisible to them, the same way the alti and laetens ignored soporati, soporati ignored liberati, and- he wasn’t sure if the liberati ignored the slaves or not, but as a general whole, the higher ignored the lower. It would not do for a smart member of society to overlook listening ears.

Still. Not everyone was smart.

“It wasn’t the fact that he had been sleeping around,” one of them whispered. “That’s how things go.”

“Of course.”

“But the lady he had been with was a _soporati.”_

The other’s eyebrows raised. “So what did she do?”

“Almost burned his face off and had her family cancel the engagement. The healers managed to fix most of his face up, but there’s going to be some scarring.”

“Serves him right.”

It was minor gossip, mostly against this guy, but it did paint the woman in an interesting light. Easily slighted, public confrontations, concerned with social statuses. Likely. It was always dangerous making assumptions from single acts, but this in another light was a small admitted weakness of impulsive behaviors. A small admitted weakness to a colleague, nothing that would be said in front of a possible rival, and nothing large enough to not be said at all.

But for a person who was merely backdrop in society? He was not considered nearly a threat. Backdrop and little more.

—

If Bull was eating or drinking, people tended to overlook him more, but some of the smarter ones would clear away. The same was true if Bull was reading a book.

If Bull read a book on the opposite side of a wall of a conversation, it was as if he had completely disappeared, and if some of the smarter ones noticed his presence, another chunk of them would dismiss him, unless he did that particular act too many times in a row.

And he was reading. If someone asked, he could tell them exactly what was going on and the finer points of the book, and the finer points of why whatever he was reading was wrong about something or other, but never to the point of Felix.

Felix was brilliant at math. This was starting to become known.

Bull slowly but surely began to do worse in his studies on purpose. Not terrible. Not even mediocre. A good student, but not a great one. It wouldn’t do to be too average as that would be more suspicious than if he was good but not great with his background. Someone who had obviously studied under skilled tutors, but not someone particularly talented at any given subject.

He began reading more in public. Not all the time as he didn’t want to give off that particular air, but enough that people would notice him, and that he preferred to be absorbed into books than talk to people. If he was a known entity, he could be dismissed even further than if he was an unknown entity. He could fade more and more into a completely uninteresting person in the background. And the more this happened, the more people began to talk more around him.

—

The lesser staff sometimes had looser lips than the upper staff and had also picked up a large number of interesting facts and tidbits. If he was casually in the background in those areas, he tended to also be overlooked.

This would be ruined if Felix showed up, smiling brightly and wanting to chat about things. In all honesty, it was annoying, because he was trying to eavesdrop, thank you.

Felix had approximately the amount of social awareness skills that he had magic.

“They’d do excavations of the Manius ruins of course, but the entire ground floor collapsed into this giant pit,” Felix said, dipping his grapes into the fondue for some reason.

Bull frowned. “That entire area is still sealed off while the researchers are supposed to be doing their thing. How’d you find out about that?”

“I… snuck in?” Felix said simply, looking at Bull as if he were particularly slow. “Anyway, it’s a really deep drop. They think there’s some kind of ancient cavern underneath that may have been used as a forbidden research laboratory. Or at least I think that’s a likely case because there sure was a lot of glowing for some normal caverns. That magical residue just seeps into the walls sometimes.”

“You just snuck in,” Bull repeated.

“Yeah?”

“Couldn’t you… get into trouble for that sort of thing?” Bull asked. There were Rules. And you followed the Rules. You could find loopholes and twist things, but ultimately you adhered to the Rules. That was how things went.

Felix grinned like an insane person. “I like trouble.”

—

Things Bull found out through excessive eavesdropping when Felix wasn’t around:

One magister was overly fond of parrots, having an entire wing (haha) of a manor devoted to them. She also liked to spend free hours in those rooms. There were bodyguards of course—no self-respecting magister would not have a bodyguard on hand at all times—but it was far more secluded than most of the other areas she visited.

Another magister was continuing his tradition of technically only having one apprentice at a time but just running through them quickly. They usually didn’t die, but apparently the man was so unlikeable he couldn’t keep an apprentice for more than a year, and his household staff didn’t seem to have any higher of an opinion of him. Not good for the lifespan, that.

The current major gossip that required no eavesdropping was that Magister Tilani’s son decided he was a daughter and refused to answer to anything other than ‘Maevaris’. This caused a rather large uproar, and the only reason Magister Tilani didn’t lose his seat was because he was well-connected and also a bit of a pushover, making people not want to lose an easy resource.

Bull found himself disapproving. Not over Maevaris being female, but of being openly female, of what it could have done to her House, of what it already did. Why bring unnecessary shame down upon the people you love?

Still, there was a certain amount of gumption and ‘consequences be damned’ that he liked about that move. And it did seem unfair that _that_ would be a cause of shame, and something along the lines of public fucking of corpses (Magister Titania’s favorite hobby for the last thirty years, and still going on strong) wouldn’t.

—

Mother figured out what he was doing of course.

“Clever Bull,” she said, beaming at him with pride.

“Do you have any advice?” Bull asked.

She hesitated for a moment. “If you go down this path, it may lock doors for you. If you want to leave this path, it will be noticeable. Not unmanageable, but the more work you put into this, the harder it will get to move beyond it.”

“I’m alright with that,” Bull said.

Bull did not say that he felt that he was a failure to his House, that the thought that he would and could not contribute anything had been slowly eating away at him.

He could be useful this way. He could _help._ And he could be damn good at it.

There was always a need for spies, after all.

—

Felix was planning on attending the University of Orlais in Val Royeux. He had been enthused. They had a great math program. Look at all these exciting math courses offered and some of the finest mathematicians in the world taught there.

Bull was going to attend with him. He would do good, not great in his classes, and ‘alright’ in perhaps one or two classes.

He would also be around all of the finest bards Orlais had to offer. Watching their interactions and learning from the immersive experience was not quite worth dying for but a close thing. And he would have one single direct trainer, a nondescript person of unknown gender who was known in some circles for teaching such things. They made their living teaching select students while keeping to a code of not giving away the identities of their students. Not out of a moral thing. No. It would just be bad for their particular kind of business and brand loyalty.

—

It was in Orlais where people were a lot more cavalier about such things that Bull realized a few things about himself, and that maybe it wasn’t just women that were pleasing to look at.

He considered this for a while but ultimately shrugged. It’d bring gossip, make him stand out a bit too much, and thus it was nothing of interest, not unless he could use it in some fashion in the future.

“Whatchya thinking about?” Felix asked, plopping down next to him with eyes far too bright.

“Schemes,” Bull said somberly, and Felix laughed and punched him in the shoulder with far more strength than a book nerd had a right to have.

Except for his own self, of course.

—

“Any lie you speak is one you will be forced to adhere to,” his trainer said. Bull did not get to find out their name. “The longer you spend time with your mark, the more likely it is to be found out, and juggling multiple lies will be exhausting. People will check your cover again and again in different ways, and you must be ready for this.”

“So… you don’t lie,” Bull said. “You just omit things?”

“Yes and no. You arrange things and let people draw their own conclusions. Any deviances from your story can then be on them for having not read the situation correctly. You will thus need to be skilled on the various cultures, subcultures, and variances of social groups of as many places as you can manage and on all places you will be working. You will need to draw as many people to you as possible as various allies and informants.”

“And, above all, be likable.”

—

Bull would be too well known, non magical abilities aside, to go too far into alternate identities. He could however spend time elsewhere and politely neglect to tell people of his heritage.

He had no magic, so it was a shameful thing.

Who would want to willingly admit they were from Tevinter?

It simply had never come up.

He’d moved here to get away from all of the backstabbing in Tevinter and simply wanted to study some subjects in peace, if found out.

Bull managed to charm some of the noble heirs also attending the university. Bull was funny. He always brought free food with him, and he was always willing to listen to your problems and your complaints about other people, and occasionally he would give out good advice. He hunched himself to not make him appear too large—he had grown up tall and broad like his namesake—unless he needed to use his size as a deterrent between some person and another.

Some people responded better to overt friendliness. Some liked if he was less approachable and ‘won him over’. Some were more drawn to knowledge, some to his new strange and eclectic talents, some to his physique, some simply to the amount of food he had on hand for any given emergency. Many preferred if he was open-minded in whatever particular area they might be, and a few liked it if they were some level of exception to the rule, usually those struggling with internalized issues.

It would take a while, his trainer had said. He would need to build confidences first. Show that people could trust him with the smaller things, and the medium things, and be a steadfast and loyal ally.

And then they might trust him with the larger things, and those were the valuable secrets.

Bull doubted he would get that far with this crowd, but this was good practice for back home. And he could practice not caring as much here where there weren’t nearly as many stakes. The entire purpose behind getting secrets was _using_ those secrets, and thus in turn using the people who would hopefully grow to like him.

Or if it turned out there were no worthy secrets, he still would have made an asset to be used for an occasion.

—

Bards had a completely different philosophy from what he normally thought of as proper spywork. Almost all of them were open about it, but Orlais had glamorized them so much that people were willing to take in bards anyway. Or maybe they liked the thrill of the Game, in playing until they got stabbed in the back. Or maybe they still liked it even after getting stabbed in the back.

Still. While not an entertainer, he could try applying some of the same techniques for back home where he was a known entity.

Another curious phenomenon in the south were the Friends of Red Jenny, some kind of bogeymen that would hit nobles and run. A kind of reminder that even as a noble, you weren’t above it all, or something along those lines. The true talent was that these Friends were so rarely caught, and there were some impressive stunts they had pulled from a spectrum of funny to harsh to deadly.

Useful.

They didn’t have Friends back in Tevinter, or at least Bull was pretty sure they didn’t, but magisters had more sources of annoyance and connections and deals and rivals than just in Tevinter.

So. Useful. Maybe he could try to figure out how it worked down here, what the system was to call a ‘hit’ on someone, the network branch in general.

—

The thing was, Bull was soft and harmless and nice back home when he visited. Not too nice, not suspiciously nice (which was a different standard for different people which took a bit to suss out on a case by case scenario.) In time, the servants grew to like him. Prominent nobles grew to overlook him. And he hoarded secrets like a magpie, memorizing them as they came to later write down in his own shorthand he had developed. He didn’t want anyone reading the secrets he wrote down after all. And for a while, this was enough, blackmail for Mother to dangle over noses, small tidbits to help her win over someone else, weaknesses he had ferreted out, get more people to try to back her bills she tried to pass with Magisters Alexius and Arida.

He wasn’t that useful yet, as many of these things Mother already knew. But the more he stretched out his web, the more he gained, and the more useful he would become.

It was about one of the bills Magister Alexius wanted passed about increasing the budget for magical education for all of the magical institutes in Tevinter, not just the prestigious Circles. They had a number of backing votes, and then that number suddenly plummeted. Bull poked around and then found the source.

Magister Hortensia didn’t even care about the bill, but she really didn’t like Alexius and had been looking for a way to fuck him over for a while now. (Again. It seemed to be her favorite hobby.) Alexius had made the mistake of being too openly passionate about this bill, and-

No. Bull stopped in that thought. That was how Orlais did things, attacking passion in order to scorn the other for daring to like something, and the usual response was to destroy the passion first in order to show you were above it all. No, Tevinter _thrived_ on passion, and here it wasn’t a mistake at all, as everyone more or less knew what everyone else was passionate about instead of the hushed secrecy.

Different games going on, and he would need to remember that.

He poked around more, asked friendly, looked at the history of Magister Hortensia’s interactions with rivals, and oh he didn’t like that. She was a traditionalist in the sense that allies of a rival were just as culpable as the rival themself, and by sticking with Alexius, Mother (and now Magister Tilani) had made themselves known in her eyes.

She would play with her rivals first, like it was some kind of game. And then whenever she got bored or maybe if her rage grew too much or whatever motivation was behind it all, she would snip at the network around them. It wasn’t too unusual as bloodbaths were not an unknown occurrence, but still.

And she had been playing with Alexius for a while. Her favorite hobby, and at some point she might get bored.

That… wouldn’t do. Blackmail wouldn’t cut it as he didn’t think she would even care about blackmail, but he was not about to let another bloodbath happen in his House. Not over something as petty as vicious boredom.

—

Magister Hortensia never ended up making it to the Magisterium. She had had a fatal heart attack the day prior when she was traversing his private gardens. It sure was a pity, Bull thought.

The seat was inherited by her apprentice, Gallus, who tried to push for her old stance but had nowhere near the amount of backing. The bill scraped through without Hortensia’s influence, Magister Tilani swinging back to their vote due to the lack of interference, and a few others followed his path.

He wasn’t sure why he felt unsettled. It wasn’t like Bull killed her. Not directly. Technically, a slave did, one whose duties, among others, involved dressing her and who accidentally left a small pin in her robes that would prick her when she made too much movement.

All it cost Bull was a vial of poison, a small sum of money, and arranged transportation after to the South.

—

Of course, nothing perfect would ever be gained. Magister Tilani died three months later, though it didn’t appear to be directly related to them. Magister Tilani had staked his ground by being well-connected and well-liked but at the cost of being often used.

The seat should have gone to Maevaris.

The rivals of House Tilani, upon realizing she had a backbone, said no and then made it an Issue. It shouldn’t have been enough of an Issue as honestly rivalries were currency in the Magisterium, but. Well.

She had been her father’s scandal, and the only reason her father had retained his seat was due to forementioned well-liked and well-connected status. With him dead, she was now on her own to claim her seat, and the Archon had yet to give it to her.

A month passed, and she still had yet to claim her seat.

Three months, and she was only steeled by this, grew even sharper.

Bull really liked her.

“She’s low on allies right now Mother,” he said.

“I’m not sure the current tense is needed,” she said primly.

“She’s struggling,” he said. “And her overall stances more or less line up with ours. If we offer her support now, that’ll benefit us in the long run.”

“Provided she inherits the seat,” she said. “It’s… unlikely. Unfortunate, but unlikely. The Magisterium is not exactly the most kind and accepting sorts. Even with having some magical talent, Magister Alexius wouldn’t be opposed to finding another heir, if only to spare Felix the cruelty of the Magisterium.”

“She’ll make it though,” Bull said. “She’s ruthless _and_ powerful enough, and she’s currently been spending more and more time in the Ambassadoria.”

Mother raised her eyebrows. “Indeed? Hmm. That is worth considering.”

—

Past Bull had been optimistic about how quickly this would take. It was not months. It took two entire years. Two years, and it could have been even longer had their House not allied with hers, recognizing her as a proper heir of the seat. There had been some brief tension to see whether she would accept this alliance, but she had.

“Father didn’t have any family,” Mae said to him at one point. “So there’s no male Tilani to inherit the seat, and he didn’t have an apprentice.”

And her mother was long since dead, and the inheritor of that House had shuffled off since. It wasn’t technically against the Rules as there was no official law for it, but alti Houses had become their own gendered identity over the millenia, where male heirs inherit their father’s house (or patron’s house in the case of passing down to a favored apprentice), and female heirs inherit their mother’s house (or patron’s house since again, apprentices).

All of which made Mae’s status of inheriting her father’s seat a bit of a mess. One that should have only taken a few months to sort out, but Bull had vastly underestimated the amount of scandal and scorn heaped Mae’s way.

Which, bad Bull. People didn’t normally care about the Rules. Forgetting this made for bad spywork. He should know better.

She also had gotten engaged to a dwarf from the Ambassadoria, a ‘representative’ from Orzammar. Even if it was a tactically and politically powerful move, Maevaris claimed it was out of love, and from what Bull could tell, that was actually the case, and Thorold seemed to love her back.

In the meantime, Magister Deciana had taken up some kind of magic that had left her body twisted and glittering, Magister Lurco’s fingerprints over smuggling operations was almost getting out of hand and boy did Bull know a good number of resources on that, Magister Danarius had still yet to recapture his escaped lyrium experiment slave, and Magister Falconius did in fact still worship and sacrifice to Old God Toth. There was an entire cult praising the dead archdemons, saying their freed souls could now reform properly into the Gods they once were, freed from their Blighted shackles.

A few members of the cult truly believed, a handful wanted power, and there was at least one cultist who was in it purely because they thought dragons were cool and they were a bored apprentice with not enough to do.

Four more rivals had died under random circumstances, and two had not. His mother had to have noticed, but she never said anything.

And then for a while, everything settled. Bull enjoyed his time at the university learning interesting skills, and also attending interesting classes. He buddied up to decent people and terrible people alike in Orlais and in Tevinter, all the while remaining on the fringe of polite social circles as he was Tevinter in Orlais, and then magicless in Tevinter. It no longer bothered him. It had become too useful to be bothered by.

Felix rarely got caught doing all sorts of trouble and continued to love his studies and talk about them in great length to Bull who was getting an unhealthy love of math by sheer osmosis.

More often than not, the information he passed his mother’s way was information she didn’t know, and that made Bull happy. It felt right. He had a purpose.

—

And then two things seemed to happen happened one right after another, even if they were technically a year apart.

In 2031 TE, Thorold died from an ‘accidental fall’. Mae was inconsolable in private, dignified mourning in public.

“I require a favor,” Mae said a week later, voice harsh. “Just names. I shall make them pay on my own, but I need to know which ones were behind this.”

“I’m already on it, Ma’am,” Bull said somberly.

Mae avoided public bloodbaths. He wasn’t sure who she was working with and was slightly pained that she didn’t pick him, but then assassinations weren’t exactly his specialty. One by one a seat in the Magisterium would empty, and then someone else would fill it.

At one point, the inheritor died a few days after.

Bull honestly didn’t know how much of this all was normal Magisterium business and how much was because Mae was openly a woman. Maybe some of this wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t been public about it because oh how Tevinter didn’t like that.

But then his father and Felix’s grandfather would all still be alive had Bull and Felix been customarily killed.

“Is this actually helping at all?” Bull asked later.

“Emotionally? No,” Mae said bitterly. “But I cannot have them around, neither on principle for Thorold, nor leave them with the idea that they could try such things again.”

And then in 2032 TE, just after the last person backing Thorold’s death had died, a message was sent to the Magna household.

Mother drew a carriage for the Alexius estate the moment it was delivered while Bull stood there in dumb shock.

Days later, Mother stepped out of the carriage before it had fully stopped moving, causing the attendees to startle, and she made a line into the estate. Bull waited patiently and then double-checked everything was in order before moving forward himself.

The staff directed him to a different room than the one Felix was normally in.

Bull had heard of Blight sickness of course. He’d studied it. But it was one thing to know, and another to see Felix lying there in bed, color drained out of his skin, eyes unnaturally pale, veins darkened, and skin sallow. Felix gave him a very small wave, hand causing the sunlight streaming through the window to dance on the motes.

“I’m not winning any beauty pageants any time soon,” Felix croaked with a small smile before his breath hitched. Bull moved forward, but Felix raised a hand. “I wouldn’t. I don’t want to risk infecting anyone. I don’t actually know if I am infectious, but I don’t want to take that chance.”

“How… long do you have,” he asked.

Felix shrugged. “There’s plants with Blight-stalling properties that Father’s already shipping here. Maybe a month? Maybe a few months if I’m really lucky. Some people seem more resistant to it than others.”

“That’s definitely long enough to get you to the Wardens though, right?”

Felix didn’t say anything.

“They wouldn’t take you,” Bull said, tongue strangely thick in his mouth.

For a moment longer, he was still silent, and when he spoke, Bull could hear the buried bitterness. “I’m not a fighter or really a mage. They weren’t interested. Dad promised them money. They still weren’t interested.”

There was more to it than that, the way Felix has said that Alexius had promised them money. Money to be had? Could be had for Felix? Survivor’s guilt? Or was this tied in to what they rarely spoke about, of the cost of their worthless existence was that others had to die. Which now included Felix’s mother. It would make sense, and survivor’s guilt was easily manipulated into-

(This was his best friend and his best friend’s dead mother; he could put aside his training for five fucking seconds.)

“I’m sorry,” Bull offered lamely, at the situation, at himself.

“Mother focused on defending me,” Felix said tonelessly. “You know, I’ve seen Mother explode a man from across a room in a duel. He didn’t get the chance to get close, but darkspawn? They… tales don’t capture them, Bull. The only reason I survived was because the carriage I was using as a barrier collapsed around me, and the darkspawn didn’t bother digging through it.”

Bull wanted to take his hand. Bull wanted to offer any kind of assurances, of false condolences, but he couldn’t think of any right now that would make Felix actually feel better. So instead he sat down next to Felix.

“I’m worried about Father,” Felix said. “I- I’m going to have a few rough months, but then I’ll be dead. But Father? He’s not taking it well,” Felix said, and Bull wanted to say ‘you are allowed to not take it well! You are _dying!’,_ but Felix pressed on before he had a chance to speak. “He’s been around for a bit, but mostly he’s been elsewhere. Hitting the books hard, so mostly just reading in here. I’m not sure what he hopes to find. Maybe he thinks he will somehow reverse engineer the cure the Wardens keep sequestered or something like that.”

—

In hindsight, this might not have been the wisest move.

“So, Olivier. Why do you want to join the Wardens?” the Warden-Commander asked. She was a stout dwarf with a beard decorated with simple braids, and she had no casteless mark on her cheek. “It is not something to throw your life away over.”

“I uh-” he hesitated for just a moment, eyes glancing down and to the left, and his fingers picked at the hem of his sleeve. “It’s a job. And jobs are scarcer these days. My arms are strong, and I know how to fight. I understand it’s a dangerous job, ma’am, but kinda hard to throw a life away when you are already struggling, and I’m already used to dangerous jobs.”

She actually had him tested, had him spar with another Warden. Now Bull was not the best fighter out there, but he could fight. He had learned a number of Orlesian techniques over his years in the University (and he was not a renegade soldier, absolutely not, just a man who used to be on the militia for a town whose fortunes had dried up).

But Bull felt pathetic in the ring.

She watched him the entire time with bird sharp eyes, and he couldn’t shake the uncanny sense she was staring right into his very soul.

“We are low on Wardens,” she eventually said, after he was drenched with sweat and a few bruises. “The Blight had done us no favors in Ferelden, and shifting resources has only weakened the effort in Anderfels and in the Deep Roads. I will be blunt. This path has a high turnover rate. Many do not survive their first year. Should you make it that long, your odds of survival greatly increase. You have one last out you may use.”

Felix was his best friend, and Bull was well-versed in faking death in tight situations.

“I’m sticking with this,” he said.

—

This meant waiting for two weeks until they accumulated a handful of other hopeful recruits. He grew more nervous each passing day, having no idea if he was too late yet. He was going to get chewed out for weeks later by Mother. Not by Felix nor Alexius for differing reasons.

The entire time none of the other Wardens would give them the time of day. He heard Wardens were a dour lot, but it was still depressing.

“You know nothing until you have met the antaam,” Meerkat said. She was an escaped saarebas who spoke Anders and Qunlat and nothing else. When asked why the name ‘Meerkat’ as that was the least likely thing she resembled—tall, blunt, could throw a table across the room, and definitely gave Bull more than a few feelings—she laughed deeply and said of course silly bas wouldn’t get the joke.

“They are sending us out tomorrow on some kind of mission,” Allan said, the twitchiest elf Bull had ever met, constantly sending a spark back and forth between his fingers. He might want to get some kind of training for that since he constantly looked like he got struck by lightning. He, unfortunately, did not speak Anders or Qunlat, but it wasn’t like Meerkat was the only mage around.

“Hunting darkspawn,” Luitwin said, some straggler from the distant Orth tribes who was doing his Maker-given duty by killing things. He had freckles and cropped red hair and looked like he could bend an iron bar with his bare hands. He, too, gave Bull feelings. “It’s the standard test.”

“That makes sense,” Bull said. “Wardens kill darkspawn. See if you can kill a darkspawn.”

Meerkat lightly nudged Bull and almost sent him toppling, and then he translated the conversation.

She huffed. “We are all good at killing things. Easy test. Should fit in nicely.” She then grinned with many sharp teeth, and Luitwin laughed and threw an arm over her shoulder.

Bull was glad he was sitting down for this.

—

Felix had been correct when he said tales didn’t do the darkspawn justice. The Warden watching over them for the mission had stressed that they would run up the length of blades to tear your head off. That no matter how much damaged you inflicted, do not assume they were dead until their head was off, and even then there was a fucking delay as the body would keep going for just a bit longer.

The Tevinter Chantry did not believe the magisters caused the Blight but rather the darkspawn had always been there. The tale hadn’t even started getting passed around after the Third Blight when Orlais got pissy on how the Tevinter Chantries were operating. And then Orlais got doubly pissy when Tevinter decided it didn’t want to be part of the Orlesian based Chantry anymore, thanks.

All the same, Bull couldn’t feel but feel a twinge of guilt seeing the monsters. They all made it through though and collected their blood, and the Warden still barely talked to a single one of them.

—

“Drink,” the Warden-Commander said, handing him the cup next, Allan’s body still twitching in death on the ground, and suddenly Bull realized why none of the Wardens were too keen on talking to any of them.

He drank.

He collapsed to his knees, hands on the floor, gasping and gagging as it flooded his senses, his blood, his mind. And then for a flash of a second, he saw all of the darkspawn at once, every last one of them pressed into his head, stretching eons into the Deep.

And then they saw him, and he whited out.

—

Allan died. Luitwin died.

Meerkat didn’t die, but she took longer to rouse.

“Now you know,” the Warden-Commander said, after handing him a cup of water to swish and spit some of the taste out.

Bull noticed he was shaking and tried to quiet his limbs.

She looked somberly at him before handing him a necklace in a disturbing rust color. “It contains blood from all four of you. A memento and a reminder.”

He wordlessly took it. It felt disturbingly warm. “You only got two Wardens out of that.”

“We got four,” she corrected. “Their names are always recorded. A small pity we offer. Now you understand why we are reluctant to take on more than is necessary.”

“And the high turnover rate.” He paused. “And why you are fond of recruiting those that won’t be missed.”

She smiled grimly. “Yes. Now, there are a few things I need to tell you about being a Warden. Your immunity is temporary. You will die in ten to thirty years before the Blight will take you.”

Oh.

“Before that happens, you will start to hear a song in your head. That is the sign, the Calling. Wardens then go to Orzammar to fight in the Deep Roads until they die. Until then, you will be hungrier than you ever thought possible, but some of that shall abate in time. You will gain the ability to sense darkspawn, and them you. Nightmares will plague you until you die. And, yes, ‘Warden stamina’ is a real thing. You will be stronger now, and faster, and more resilient than before. That is all. You, and Meerkat, will have a few days to rest until you will be assigned to active duty. The cooks already know the drill, and you are welcome to the kitchens for your recovery period.”

—

As it turned out, it was not easy to sneak into the secret archive. It really, _really_ wasn’t. It did not help that he was distracted by the ravenous hunger that consumed his every thought.

He polished off an entire pot of soup and two loaves of bread in one sitting, and then almost cried a little when _he was still hungry._ He was being distracted with unnecessary hunger while Felix was dying.

A Warden laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ll get used to it,” she said with a bright grin. A number of the Wardens were suddenly friendly with the two of them. No point in investing in potentially dead recruits, but they had lived. “You are doing better than our kossith friend.”

—

There were alarm runes and protection runes and armed guards. They could sense him, he realized. It was the Blight in his blood. He wanted to scream in frustration.

—

There was not a single paper describing the ritual in the archive. Maker damn it all.

—

Oh gee, surely it’ll be hard but not impossible.

Oh what? No known spy has ever accomplished stealing the Wardens’ deepest secrets? Well of course since if someone did pull it off, they wouldn’t publicize it, now would they?

Let’s not think into these things too hard because surely I, Bull, will have _no problems whatsoever in this plan._

—

“It is oral,” Meerkat eventually said in her clipped tone to him. “They do not write some secrets. They are passed orally. You can not find these.”

“How do you know?” he asked.

“About your search or secrets?”

“Both.”

She glanced over at him with sharp eyes and did not answer.

“Can you find out anything more?” he asked desperately.

She hummed. “You owe me favor.”

—

As it turned out, you need a drop of actual archdemon blood for the ritual and lyrium in a specifically mixed amount. That ratio was important since it was literally a matter of life or death.

There were also specific herbs involved in exact ratios that Meerkat could not figure out because they hadn’t went into great detail over said things.

Maker damn _everything._

—

“So can you turn invisible? Hide yourself from people’s minds?”

She laughed. “Oh, that would have made escape easy. No mister arvaraad, there is no Meerkat here. Go search elsewhere.”

“You aren’t going to tell me, are you?” he asked.

“I like having few secrets,” she said. “Adds to mystery. People love mystery.”

He ended up writing down what he could and then sending it out in the most secret of manners because the Wardens were not shitting around about their security. And unfortunately, this was not one of those things he could vague talk about in a letter, not without a predetermined code which he didn’t think he would need.

He charged blindly right into this one.

When days passed and he had still yet to be killed for the breach in security, he not-quite relaxed, but he did breathe easier.

—

It was a lot harder to fake your death when other Wardens could sense your position and also if you were alive or dead. That just made it a whole fucking lot harder. He had had no idea what he had been getting into. He didn’t know if any of this helped, if Felix hadn’t already died by then. If the letter had gotten to Alexius in time. If Alexius could even reverse-engineer the ritual.

If Felix could even survive the ritual.

He tried to not let the the bitterness consume him. He did what he could, and he would find out if it had worked or not soon enough. He just had to fake his death first. It had to be believable so no one thought he deserted and came looking after him. Even if his cover story was solid, if they investigated that far, they would realize it was a fake, and then they would be a whole lot more interested in trying to hunt him down, just in case he had only joined up to steal their secrets or the like.

Which. He did. So.

—

It wasn’t that Bull didn’t know how to fight, because he could; he had been trained in the basics back home and then had trained a great deal further in Orlais as his trainer deemed it prudent.

Bull had been feeling pretty good in his own combat training. Had been. There was a distinct difference between that style of fighting and then an unending grind of darkspawn as he fought with other people at his side.

“Three months,” Len said cheerfully, clapping his back hard enough to almost send Bull stumbling. He still, still, had no idea if Len was trying to pull powermoves or simply came off as an over-eager cat wanting to sharpen its claws on everyone it met. “Nine to go, and then you might as well live forever.”

“Yeah, that’s not how math works,” Bull said.

“Likely still increase,” Meerkat said. “Get used to the combat, get better. More likely to live the next day. Still might die, but not die as much.”

“That’s not what he said,” Bull said. “He-”

“Wow, get your math right,” another Warden chimed in.

“Yeah seriously, take up some learning. I got grandpaps that can do better than that.”

The Wardens then continued to heckle him until they got bored and wandered off.

—

Four months in, one of the Wardens he was working with died. An emissary had paralyzed her, and no one could get to her in time before a hurlock lopped off her head. Her body was burned in proper Andrastian style, moderately similar to back home, but with less beseeching of a prophet who didn’t have the divine powers to help guide souls.

Bull shouldn’t judge, he supposed. She was Andrastian, so she got an Andrastian funeral. The Anderfels Wardens tried to not have Dalish elves in their ranks, instead assigning them to greener lands where one could actually plant a tree with hope of the tree lasting more than half an hour.

It was said that the endless desert used to be lush and green, with rolling plains interspersed by thick forestry and bountiful rivers, all filled with game enough for griffins to fly and eat comfortably.

There wasn’t much luck of that now in many different ways.

—

Bull got to find out where baby darkspawn came from, and that was a question he decided he never wanted answered in the first place. They put the broodmother’s poor soul to rest at the cost of a Warden, and then resumed their normal push against the latest darkspawn movement. A month later, Warden scouts reported two more broodmothers in roughly the same area. They were deployed and didn’t lose anyone that time.

There was a brief lull, and then darkspawn overran a fortified town they had recently bolstered, slaughtering most of the inhabitants, and creating yet another broodmother.

Some of the Wardens drank. Others went melancholy, and some seemed completely unaffected by it all.

It all went in cycles. Bloodbaths in Tevinter, assassinations of rivals back and forth, round and round, and there would always be new ones to step over the bodies of the old ones.

It was a strange thing to connect to, he distantly thought, since he still didn’t believe magisters actually created the darkspawn, and the Commander agreed with him, dismissing that as Andrastian propaganda.

You kill some broodmothers, and more pop up, drug from the town you had helped a few weeks ago. Magister Arida had been lucky, and she was dead.

When he had drank, he had seen the entirety of the Blight all at once, and now the perpetual, unending, _hopeless_ cycle of it all was starting to sink in. That that vastness had always been there, had run that deep while most of Thedas ignored otherwise. And this was after _five Blights._ Five archdemons and their armies slain, and it hadn’t seemingly made a dent.

After that mission, the Warden-Commander pulled him aside to a private room before handing him a small tin bottle from somewhere, and then pulled out another bottle for herself.

“Drink,” she said.

“What kind of alcohol is this?” he asked.

“Alcohol,” she said. “It will get the job done. Drink.”

He drank. It tasted awful, but it was alcohol.

“It’s time we had the talk,” the Warden-Commander said. He still didn’t know her name. Nobody used her name. He was pretty sure nobody _knew_ her name, and all of them were too afraid to ask at this point.

“I already got that one. And another one,” Bull said. “Honestly, there should be just one main talk, because if these are spread apart-”

“Over a thousand years ago, the world ended,” she said, and Bull shut up. “It was the apocalypse. No hope of survival. People fought. People died. More people died. Children were born who either died or their parents died, and then children were born to those children until no one could remember a world where the apocalypse didn’t continue to ravage the world.”

She drank then, and Bull did too.

“But we are all a stubborn lot, and we didn’t die. And we continued to not die, regardless of the apocalypse, regardless of it all. And then one day, some real stupid bastards came along and talked to some stupid people and came up with a dumbass plan. And these assholes went ‘hey. This could kill us, but it might be worth a shot since we are running out of ideas.’”

Another swig.

“They all died,” she said. “Some other assholes went ‘oh shit, that was a bad idea, and we maybe shouldn’t try that’, but then some _more_ assholes didn’t get that memo, and they tweaked around a bit, tried it, and then all died as well. But eventually you see, eventually they got a formula down where some would survive, and that’s how Wardens were born. And then after a while and a number of dead griffins and also Wardens, Dumat finally kicked the bucket, and the world was saved.”

“No offense ma’am, but is there a point to this?” Bull asked.

She pointed with her bottle at him. “Centuries later, second Blight hit. People died. End of the world. Screaming and more screaming. Land devastated and civilizations set back, but it wasn’t as bad as the first one. And then this- this kept happening for you surfacers. Orzammar? It never ended. Apocalypse never ended, still going on there, and you surfacers- look, point is, the apocalypse happened, repeatedly, and is still happening, and you see the world around us?” She gestured with her arms. “Still standing. People still on it, living their dumbass lives. What we got ain’t perfect, but we ain’t dead yet. And somewhere down the line, some dumbasses are going to have more dumbass ideas, and they will all fuck up and die, but _eventually,_ someone is going to get it right. We’ll get a proper cure, figure out the actual source of the darkspawn. Blow that up, start a long, grueling task of mopping up the rest, and then it will be all over.”

“And then someone else will come along and fuck things up,” Bull said.

“Haha, exactly,” she said with a disturbing grin. “But the point is, if everyone gave up during the various apocalypses, there wouldn’t have been any dumb assholes going to try their dumb ideas to save the world. So we play the long resistance game, and non-dwarven and non-Ander civilians roll their eyes at us, but someday in the future, we’ll get it all right.”

She took a swig. “And maybe tweak the formula a little.”

“Yeah, over half of your recruits dying isn’t ideal,” he said.

She made a noise. “Used to have a survival rate of about one in twenty.”

He blinked.

“Yeah, I know.” She pointed at his bottle. “Anyway, you drink that, battle your inner demons—or I guess not since you aren’t a mage—and keep on going.”

He dutifully drank.

—

Things Bull picked up in his Warden days: a drinking habit; an increased libido (but at least he didn’t get aroused by dead darkspawn like a few of the other Wardens because there really were things they didn’t tell you when you first signed up); the ability to sleep just about anywhere that was vaguely horizontal; the ability to sit down and eat your rat and be thankful it was a cooked one this time.

And then one day, when Bull had still yet to figure out how to fake his death because the Wardens did not look kindly upon deserters and it was really hard to figure something out when you spent most of your time exhausted physically and mentally, and he couldn’t quite figure out how to make a realistic cave-in that would make it look like he died without killing him.

One day, a letter came for ‘Olivier’, signed by Jacques. Who was a dead mathematician, and coincidentally, one of Felix’ favorites because of course Felix had favorite mathematicians.

He managed somehow to take the letter casually and waited until he could slip into the storeroom to read it. He carefully unlocked and relocked the door when slipping in, and settled down on a barrel before opening it. It was coded, words carefully chosen to make it seem like an old friend from his hometown wanted to congratulate him on becoming a Warden, and then also update him on what was going on back home.

Jacques had been sick for a while. They tried some medicine, but it only sort of took. He’s no longer dying as quickly, but nor is he better. His father is still distraught and isn’t accepting the fact that sometimes, people die. He’s worried for his father who has been looking into actual magic for cures.

The town itself is still more or less stable. His extended family has been able to keep the work going while his father slowly lost all of his marbles, and Jacques was growing increasingly concerned. He had also started to talk to strange men from outside of town who talked vaguely about ‘researching a cure’ in return for work done.

Jacques doesn’t trust these men in the slightest.

Anyway, everyone is pleased with him and also concerned, and if he could sent a message back confirming his living status, that would be just great.

Felix was _alive._ Granted, it could be a fake letter; Bull wasn’t fool enough to assume it couldn’t be. But there were enough small references that Bull felt it was most likely genuine.

Meanwhile, Magister Alexius was apparently off his rocker.

He _still_ was trying to figure out how to fake his death around other Wardens. He worried at the inside of his cheek, thinking. Desertion would only bring shame upon his House if found out, but there was not a lot he could do from over here. Not yet.

Alexius was the type who could go paranoid. If Bull tried to re-establish his graces earlier, appealing to helping save Felix as much as possible, he might get a foothold in that door. It’d be something.

—

In the next several months, Bull got no word back from Alexius, happy letters from Felix, strongly worded letters from his mother, and then updates from Mae on all matter of things.

He found a strange entertainment in seeing what new farm metaphors Mae would come up with next. She had to have consulted someone because she was getting details right, and he was fairly certain Mae had never once stepped foot in a farming village.

His mother wasn’t exactly pleased with the level of risk he took (and she didn’t know all of it), but it was a noble thing he did for Felix, and she was Proud of him.

And also pissed at him for _not telling her before he left._ (She would have tried to talk him out of it.)

Felix was apparently not in Tevinter. He was also not in Orlais, which were the two places he was familiar with. They kept moving from place to place, and the only reason he started to bother with the names of the places was because he had to let ‘Olivier’ know where he was going to be next.

—

Two months later, Bull began to hear whispers in his mind. A few weeks after that, the whispers became louder and more enthralling. It couldn’t be the Calling as he had only been a Warden for a few years. But before he could talk to the Warden-Commander about this, all of them were summoned into a group meeting.

“I won’t mince words,” the Warden-Commander said. “A number of you have already talked with me in private and may know what is going on, but for the rest of you, you are all hearing the Calling, correct?”

Bull’s stomach dropped, and scatteredly the group nodded.

She pursed her lips, the reaction to be seeming not what she was hoping for. “As far as we can tell, every Warden in every last post has suddenly began to hear the Calling, and we have no idea why.”

Well fuck.

“The higher-ups have began to consider options,” she continued. “We have started to consolidate our knowledge into the written, to preserve what we know should others decide to try taking up the mantle of Warden again if we are able to fix things. For now, we are on a short time limit in order to deal with the Deep Roads as quickly as possible. If we are very, very lucky, we may have as much as two years. Until further orders come, we shall be pressing harder and resorting to scorched earth tactics. It pains me to see the Stone so badly hurt, but better temporary pain than permanent infection.”

“That will be all.”

—

Bull admired the Warden-Commander. He loved her almost like another mother, and he was not certain if all of that was entirely himself, and how much of that might be fucked up Warden biology hivemind residue bullshit.

And honestly, it wasn’t that different than things he had seen back home. Far worse than what his mother would move for, but the Warden-Commander would only take in those volunteering, and from what was recently rumored and whispered, that wasn’t too different from how golems were forged.

Their names would be recorded and honored for their sacrifice, she said. It was the best plan they could come up with, and if the Veil tore down there, that would only inflict further damage upon the darkspawn. Perhaps they couldn’t kill them all, but they damn well sure could put a large enough dent in them that perhaps golems and the warriors of Orzammar could mop up the rest. She didn’t think it likely, but all you could do was press forward with the options available to you.

But staring down the room, numerous Rage demons oozing out of the ground, pulled from the Fade and bound into service, while Wardens stood nervously or resolutely nearby, Bull couldn’t help but feel there was something wrong with this. His head felt… fuzzy, and thinking around these topics was like blindly grasping in the dark, and ‘let mine be the last sacrifice’.

It wasn’t that the rationale was poor; it was that he couldn’t think _around_ the rationale, and for someone like Bull, that meant there was something else at work here. Rationale, solid or not, be damned, because Bull couldn’t do this. And surely if he just pointed this out-

“I do not mind if you do not wish to be sacrificed Olivier,” the Warden-Commander said frostily, one of the mages awkwardly standing in the background, “but you cannot debate my direct orders. I will not have that in the ranks.”

“Just think for a moment,” Bull pleaded. “It’s a good plan,” he said quickly, because that was important to say because it was, and that had to be addressed beforehand. “But thinking of anything else—any other solution at all—is a lot harder than it should be. I’m not saying don’t do the plan; what I’m saying is investigate why our heads are fucked up first. Then go with the plan.”

She paused then, and he could almost see the thoughts swirling around in her head.

“I’m sorry,” the mage said apologetically, and both of them whipped around to face him. “I really am.”

And then he struck her down with lightning. (Of course. Target the leader who might be able to sway appeal against him.)

Training kicked in—or maybe she somehow ordered him subconsciously through the hivemind, what did he know—and as she dropped, he already found himself slitting the mage’s throat with a knife.

Pandemonium promptly broke loose.

—

Bull did not end up finding out if she lived or not. He sure hoped she did, and it was hard to kill a dwarf with magic. As was, Bull ended up fleeing the disaster in the keep.

Maybe there had been enough chaos between the Wardens and some of the demons that had been unleashed upon that mage’s death that they would assume Olivier had died.

Or maybe they had noticed, and on top of being a mundane altus, he was a deserter as well.

He kept off the road, but just far enough he could see it in the distance to follow. He would need to head to a town because he hadn’t been able to grab anything before his desperate flight. This included on of those important luxuries called water. He knew Wardens were hardy, disturbingly hardy, but he hadn’t ever tested how long he could last without water, and doing this test in the middle of a hot desert was not what he would consider ideal, even if he did travel at night.

It was two days to the nearest town. He was dizzy and his throat felt like gravel, but he wasn’t nearly as bad off as he should be.

That didn’t stop him from playing up his symptoms. The local innkeeper took pity on him and gave him food and water, and Bull slept through the day in an actual bed instead of an alcove of rock and sand. When he awoke, finally refreshed, he thought about what his next step should be with a clear of mind as he could get.

Felix would be his first goal, as he was likely also hearing the Calling but would have no idea what that was.

…Bull had no idea of which of the remaining Wardens from his area were still alive. Not all of them would have lived that, and hopefully someone who had listened to his arguments would be able to persuade the rest into not killing themselves off. Or maybe someone else would piece it together.

And then- what then? He couldn’t return to his position if he was _going to die soon,_ and all the Wardens having a mass die-off should be a major source of concern for people. But what could he do?

Aside from getting his throat slit to bind demons in his place for the last push.

No, no he had just worked through that that shouldn’t be the only plan he could think of. That was a bad sign. There was something else going on, and he was going to figure this out.

Soon at least. First he would have to acquire some supplies and hitch a ride.

—

His mother had yelled at him angrily, chewed him out for a solid minute minutes, before hugging him dearly.

“You are a stupid child,” she said.

“You’ve said that before in your letters,” Bull said, hugging her back.

“So you were successfully able to fake your death?”

The keep had turned against itself, Bull had deserted, and all the Wardens were going to die soon. Maybe. “Pretty much,” Bull said.

She narrowed her eyes.

“It was as close to faking my death as I possibly could have ever done,” he said truthfully.

She did not press now, but Bull would need to have an awkward conversation with her later.

“I know you are not telling me everything, but no matter. Let us celebrate your return home, and tomorrow we can discuss things,” she said. “Felix also sent you a letter. Apparently he knew sooner than _I_ that you would be arriving.”

“I really thought I would get here faster than a letter,” he said sheepishly. “There was a sandstorm. And then darkspawn. We got delayed a lot.”

—

The next day, the next glorious day where he had been reacquainted with luxurious beds and food, he opened the letter.

“So,” the letter began. “Glad to hear you are out of the Wardens. That doesn’t seem like it would lend itself to a long lifespan”—hahahaha—”but now that no one might possibly steal one of these letters, I can talk freely.

Father appreciated what you did, but I don’t think it fully took. The Blight hasn’t progressed, but nor did it go away. He never did like partial successes, and so he began to listen to an actual cult. A cult!

They call themselves the Venatori, and I think they’ve promised him a cure for me or something. They are interested in some of the magic he began researching, things along the lines of the ritual you sent us. I think he was actually magically experimenting with the Blight itself.

And then some of the household slaves went missing.

I tried confronting him about this, but he wouldn’t listen to me, and I don’t want people to _die_ just so Father can fuck around with dangerous magic.

They have to have some kind of power, because Father isn’t a complete fool. Frankly, I think they do have some larger source of power that I can’t see, and more backing back home than I know of. It’s worrying, and for some reason, the Venatori seemed interested in the disaster here down South. The thing between the mages and the Templars and the Chantry. It’s all a dangerous mess, and hardly anyone knows fully what’s going on or what happened, other than both the Circle and the Templars broke away from the Chantry. Some guy blew up a building, and I think there was also a vote? Something about Tranquility as well.

I don’t really pay much attention to current events. That was more of your thing, so you probably know more on that than I.”

Bull really, really did. Maker, Felix. You could be so dense. He was in the middle of the conflict and didn’t know the particulars?

“I’m guessing you are fishing around to investigate. As mentioned, Father really did appreciate your sacrifice, so I think he’d be willing to talk to you and not be too suspicious? Hard to say.

If you did come down, we are going to be heading to Redcliffe for some reason which is conveniently in the middle of a whole lot of fighting. You’d have to sneak in somehow, but I doubt that would be a problem for you.

Your dearest-

Felix Alexius, mathematician extraordinare, caught up in too much Venatori bullshit”

There had been no mention of the background song of the Calling, but Felix was right on Bull absolutely going down first thing. He could talk to him personally then.

…he would just have to talk to his mother first this time.

—

He had expected an argument.

“No, I don’t have a problem with this,” she said, startling him slightly. “At least I will know where you are.”

Ah, trusty guilt. And he probably did deserve this level of a guilt trip in all honesty.

“I’m really sorry Mother.”

“You should be relatively safe,” she continued. “You aren’t a mage which should help with going down South on unofficial business, and Alexius was always fond of you. I’m not sure Felix ever said as much, but he had always been insecure in his lack of magic, and having you around helped.”

He understood that feeling, of being the disappointment, of the shunning of society, of the stupid fucking deaths surrounding it all.

“I’ve always been good at charming people. And I will keep in contact as much as I can this time. I promise.”

She smiled warmly. “Good. I worry over you.”

(She had sacrificed much over him, and that made it harder to let him go.)

“I’m a Warden now,” he said. He still hadn’t gotten around to telling her one of the related side effects. As fucked up as Alexius’ research had gotten, Felix didn’t mention the Calling, and that was worth investigating before telling his mother about his possible impending death.

Because if Felix _wasn’t_ hearing the Calling?

“I’m a lot harder to kill, and I’m not just talking about actual combat experience now.”

She nodded. “True. And also you won’t be traveling alone.”

He frowned for a moment. She wouldn’t be implying herself. “Did you hire some kind of bodyguard or- you aren’t going to tell me.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“You are going to keep this ‘I snuck off to join the Wardens without telling anyone’ dangling over my head for a while.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Fair.”

—

It was Mae. Of course it was Mae.

“Don’t you also have Magisterium duties to meddle with?” Bull asked, unable to keep a smile off of his face. “You worked hard for that seat.”

“I will be handling things from over here,” Mother said.

“And I’ll be doing as much as I can long distance,” Mae said. “As if Magister Lucius ever bothers to show up to meetings anyway, and no one has kicked him out yet.”

“Okay, but why you?” Bull asked.

She sighed dramatically. “Your mother and I have actually been talking it over for a while, and we figured at least one high class Tevinter mage should publicly oppose the Venatori setting up down South, lest we lose all reputation down there. And unfortunately, we couldn’t find some gullible, hotheaded Tevinter mage with no self-preservation instincts to talk into going.”

“A true pity,” he said.

“Hopefully between the two of us we can fix a chunk of the mess down there. I’ve put effort into fixing things, and I’m not going to have some upstarts ruin all my hard work.”

“Maker guide you both,” Mother said.

—

Two days into the trip, the entire fucking sky ripped open into pure green, swirling around like the eye of a storm.

Bull blinked a few times.

“Mae?”

When she didn’t respond, he nudged her a few times to get her attention, and then he pointed upwards.

“Oh,” she said.

“Well,” she said.

She squinted at the direction. “It looks like the origin point seems to be down south. Maybe it wasn’t us this time?”

“Hey. Don’t diss our country like that,” he said. “Show some national pride. I’m sure we can somehow still be responsible for this.”

She laughed, and then they stood there for a moment, just staring at the sky, and then further down the road where the air tore apart. A few demons tumbled out of the rift, seeming dazed, and then seeming very upset by all this.

“Do you think someone should get on that?” Bull finally asked hesitantly. “The big sky thing?”

“It does look like something that could be apocalyptic,” Mae said. “As long as we are headed down South to undermine the Venatori, we might as well look into that. It’d be a moot point if the entire world died after all.”

“We’ve survived the apocalypse before,” Bull said without thinking, and then was painfully reminded of the Warden-Commander.

And his own lifespan.

And oh hey now the sky was torn asunder. He sure hoped she was right about dumb assholes and apocalypses.

“Is that- is that the Fade? That’s the Fade. That’s fantastic. There are going to be demons _everywhere,"_ Mae said in distaste, already walking towards the few demons up ahead.

Bull brightened. “Do you think?”


End file.
